Parque Nacional El Imposible

A new tour guide, Irving, met us at the hotel this morning to take us on a tour of one of the largest coffee production factories in El Salvador. The factory is attached to the coffee farm of about 200 acres, but process for twenty other farms. Each bin is labelled as it comes into the factory so that the farm name, coffee variety and quality of the bean is recorded and maintained throughout the process.

There are a number of ways in which the El Salvadorians process coffee, that different to the way that Peter's father processed the beans. A major example is their "honey" coffee. Here the beans are laid out to dry on table racks whilst still within the berry until the berry dries out. Then they are de- berried but retain their muniscas, where they are left to dry for a long time and then dealt with in the usual way. Apparently the flavour is delicious, tasting like honey! The farm sells five different types of coffee from its own fields.

The garden around the coffee farm house were just like the ones we had around the houses in Kenya - very beautiful!

This morning the car in which Irving came to collect us, was a brand new four-wheel drive Nissan. This was because the road to Parque Nacional El Imposible was so steep and mostly made with very slippery cobbled stones! Of course it was raining as we arrived so the promised view from the top across to the volcanoes was impossible to see.

The rainforest however is beautiful and we managed to walk up and down the very slipperery path.

We found an intriquing carnevorial flower that grows at the base of its plant. It closes at night after many insects have walked passed.

Tonight dinner was held in another papuseria. We negotiated a ride by tut-tut to the reccommended local restaurant. When we got to the restaurant, Peter asked him how much it was. He said $1.50, Peter had been told that we should pay one dollar only, no more! So despite the fact that we had organised for us to be returned to the hotel in a hiurs time, the tuk,tuk driver did not show up. So the owner of the Papusaria drive us in her own car to the hotel and wouldn't take anything for her efforts.